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Help:Table
A wikitable is an arrangement of columns and rows used to organize and position data. Tables are useful for this purpose and there are many different styles and tricks that can be used to customise each. This page gives you information about syntax to build wikitables in Wikipedia. Using the toolbar To automatically insert a table, click or (Insert a table) on the . If "Insert a table" is not on the toolbar follow these directions to add it. The following text is inserted when Insert a table is clicked: The sample text ("Header text" or "Example") is to be replaced with actual data. Pipe syntax tutorial Although HTML table syntax also works, special wikicode can be used as a shortcut to create a table. The pipe (vertical bar) codes function exactly the same as HTML table markup, so a knowledge of HTML table code will help in understanding pipe code. The shortcuts are as follows: * The entire table is encased with curly brackets and a vertical bar character (a pipe). So use ' ' to end it. Each one needs to be on its own line: ' ' * An optional table caption is included with a line starting with a vertical bar and plus sign "|+" and the caption after it: * To start a new table row, type a vertical bar and a hyphen on its own line: "|-'". The codes for the cells in that row will start on the next line. * Type the codes for each ''table cell in the next row, starting with a bar: * Cells can be separated with either a new line and new bar, a new line and a double bar, or by a double bar "||'" on the same line. All three produce the same output: * Cell code that contains a single bar in the text will fail to render as expected: cell code between the first two single bars, or between a double bar and the first single bar becomes (optional) row formatting code. Leaving it blank has the effect of merging single bars into the text: which is probably not what you expected: However, the format modifier is useful: Just remember: no more than 2 single pipes on a line! * a row of '''column headings' is identified by using "! scope="col" |" instead of "|", and using "!! scope="col" |" instead of "||". Header cells typically render differently from regular cells, depending on the browser. They are often rendered in a bold font and centered. * the first cell of a row is identified as a row heading by starting the line with "! scope="row" |" instead of "|", and starting subsequent data cells on a new line. * Optional parameters can modify the behavior of cells, rows, or the entire table. For instance, a border could be added to the table: The final table would display like this: The table parameters and cell parameters are the same as in HTML, see http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html#edef-TABLE and Table (HTML). However, the colgroup and col elements are currently not . Thead, tbody and tfoot are supported from Mediawiki version 1.18 on ( Current version on Wikipedia: ). A table can be useful even if none of the cells have content. For example, the background colors of cells can be changed with cell parameters, making the table into a diagram, like meta:Template talk:Square 8x8 pentomino example. An "image" in the form of a table is much more convenient to edit than an uploaded image. Each row must have the same number of cells as the other rows, so that the number of columns in the table remains consistent. For empty cells, use the non-breaking space as content to ensure that the cells are displayed. To show a visible pipe in a cell, use | or |. With colspan and rowspan cells can span several columns or rows, see the example below. However, this has the disadvantage that sorting does not work properly anymore. Examples Simple example Both of these generate the same output. Choose a style based on the number of cells in each row and the total text inside each cell. The wiki markup code: As it appears in a browser (note that there are no borders): Multiplication table Here is the wiki markup code: As it appears in a browser (see '' ): Color; scope of parameters Two ways of specifying color of text and background for a single cell are as follows. The first form is preferred because the second form uses deprecated HTML: The wiki markup code: As it appears in a browser: Like other parameters, colors can also be specified for a whole row or the whole table; parameters for a row override the value for the table, and those for a cell override those for a row. (Note that there is no easy way to specify a color for a whole column—each cell in the column must be individually specified. Tools can make it easier.) The wiki markup code: As it appears in a browser: To make the table blend in with the background, use style="background: none;" or style="background: transparent;". (Warning: style="background: inherit;", does not work with some browsers, including IE6!) To force a cell to match one of the default colors of the , use style="background: #f2f2f2" for the darker header, and style="background: #f9f9f9" for the lighter body. See: style, background, list of colors, web colors and the template Coltit. Width, height The width and height of the whole table can be specified, as well as the height of a row. To specify the width of a column one can specify the width of an arbitrary cell in it. If the width is not specified for all columns, and/or the height is not specified for all rows, then there is some ambiguity, and the result depends on the browser. The wiki markup code: As it appears in a browser: Note that style="inline CSS" has no effect with some browsers. If compatibility is important, equivalent older constructs like width="75%" should work on more browsers. Setting column widths To force column widths to specific requirements, rather than accepting the width of the widest text element in a column's cells, follow this example. Note that wrap-around of text is forced. The wiki markup code: To set column widths in a table without headers, specify the width in the first cell for each column, like this: One application of setting the widths is aligning columns of consecutive tables: Nowrap In a table that spans the entire width of a page, cells narrower than the widest cell tend to wrap. To keep an entire column from wrapping, use style=white-space:nowrap in a non-header cell on the longest/widest cell to affect the entire column. Before: After: Setting borders Table borders default to a complex shaded double-line (the default in HTML); however, those borders can be set to a thin solid line by using a style-parameter (style="border: 1px solid darkgray"), as in the following (''Note: if you intend to use the 'cellpadding' or 'cellspacing' options along with a border, you MUST use this format): Note the bottom-row texts are centered by 'align="center"' while star-images were not centered. As long as the "Image:" specs omit the parameter "thumb|" they will not show the caption lines in the table (only during mouse-over). The border color "darkgray" matches typical tables or infoboxes in articles; however, it could be any color name (such as style="border: 1px solid darkgreen;") or use a hex-color (such as: #DDCCBB). A column format-specifier (enclosed in "|...|") can have a style-parameter to set borders on each cell, as follows: Note only the image cells, here, have individual borders, not the text. The lower hex-colors (such as: #616161) are closer to black. Typically, all borders in a table would be one specific color. Vertical alignment By default data in tables is vertically centrally aligned, which results in odd-looking layouts like this: To fix this, apply the valign="top" attribute to the rows (unfortunately it seems to be necessary to apply this individually to every single row). For example: Cell content indenting The contents of a cell can be indented using a CSS style of padding-left. For example: Positioning You can position the table itself, the contents of a row, and the contents of a cell, but not with a single parameter for all the contents of the table. See m:Template talk:Table demo. Prior to April 2009, using "float" to position a table was discouraged; however, it no longer always breaks page rendering at large font sizes. See a floated image, below, under "Floating images in the center". Mélange Note: This example is not accessible, and should be avoided as much as possible. For example, nested tables (tables inside tables) should be separated into distinct tables when possible. Here is a more advanced example, showing some more options available for making up tables. Note however that with colspan and rowspan sorting does not work properly anymore. Users can play with these settings in their own table to see what effect they have. Not all of these techniques may be appropriate in all cases; just because colored backgrounds can be added, for example, does not mean it is always a good idea. Try to keep the markup in tables relatively simple—remember, other people are going to be editing the article too! This example should give an idea of what is possible, though. The wiki markup code: |} As it appears in a browser: |} Floating table The wiki markup coding: This paragraph is before the table. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod... Note the floating-table to the right. This paragraph is after the table. The text in column 2 will span both rows due to format specifier "rowspan=2" so there is no coding for "Col 2" in the 2nd row, just: Col 1 & Col 3. As it appears in a browser: This paragraph is before the table. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod... Note the floating-table to the right. This paragraph is after the table. The text in column 2 will span both rows due to format specifier "rowspan=2" so there is no coding for "Col 2" in the 2nd row, just: Col 1 & Col 3. Floating images in the center A table can be used to wrap an image, so that the table can float towards the center of the page (such as using: style="float: right;"). However, the table margins, border and font-size must be precisely set to match a typical image display. The Image-spec parameter "thumb|" (although auto-thumbnailing to user-preference width) forces a wide left-margin that squeezes the nearby text, so the parameter "center|" can be added to suppress the left-margin padding. However, "center" sometimes shoves the caption to a 2nd line (under a centered box "[]"), so "thumb|" could be omitted and just hard-code the image size, adding a gray (#BBB) border. Using precise parameters to match other images, a floating-image table can be coded as follows: The text inside the floating-table is sized by style="font-size: 86%;". That floating-image table floats a typical image-box, but allows adjusting the left-hand margin of the image (see temple-example floating below). The caption-text can be omitted, or remove the parameter "thumb|" so the caption is hidden until "mouse-over display". Unfortunately the parameter "thumb|" (used for displaying the caption) also controls the auto-thumbnailing to re-size images by user-preferences size. In April 2009, it was not possible to have auto-thumbnail sizing while also concealing the caption: parameter "thumb|" triggers both actions and forces the caption to display. An image set with parameter "left|" will gain a wide right-side margin (opposite margin of parameter "right|"), so floating toward the left would require an image set as "center|" inside a table with style="float:left; margin:0.46em 0.2em". Recall that, outside an image-table, the parameter "right|" causes an image to align (either) above or below an infobox, but would not float alongside the infobox. Note the order of precedence: first come infoboxes or images using "right|", then come the floating-tables, and lastly, any text will wrap that can still fit. If the first text-word is too long, no text will fit to complete the left-hand side, so beware creating a "ragged left margin" when not enough space remains for text to fit alongside floating-tables. If multiple single image-tables are stacked, they will float to align across the page, depending on page-width. The text will be squeezed to allow as many floating-tables as can fit, as auto-aligned, then wrap whatever text (can still fit) at the left-hand side. That auto-aligning feature can be used to create a "floating-gallery" of images: a set of 20 floating-tables will wrap (backward, right-to-left) as if each table were a word of text to wrap across and down the page. To wrap in the typical direction (wrapping left-to-right) define all those floating-tables, instead, as left-side tables using the top parameter style="float:left; margin:0.46em 0.2em". Multiple floating-images empower more flexible typesetting of images around the text. Nested tables Note: because they cause accessibility issues, nested tables should be avoided whenever possible. Seven different (blue) tables are shown nested inside the cells of a table. Automatically the two tables |A| and |B|B| are vertically aligned instead of the usual side by side of text characters in a cell. "float" is used to fix each of tables |C| and |D| to their own position within one cell of the table. This may be used for charts and schemes. Nested tables must start on a new line. Wiki markup ' | style="vertical-align:bottom;"| the original table again | style="width:100px;" | ' ' ' ' | style="width:50px;" | ' ' ' ' |} '''As it appears in a browser': | style="vertical-align: bottom;" | the original table again | style="width: 100px;" | | style="width: 50px;" | |} Combined use of COLSPAN and ROWSPAN Wiki markup As it appears in a browser: Note that using rowspan="2" for cell G''' combined with rowspan="3" for cell '''F to get another row below G''' and '''F won't work, because all (implicit) cells would be empty. Likewise complete columns are not displayed if all their cells are empty. Borders between non-empty and empty cells might be also not displayed (depending on the browser), use to fill an empty cell with dummy content. Centering tables Centered tables can be achieved, but they will not "float"; that is to say, no text will appear to either side. The trick is As it appears in a browser: Setting parameters At the start of a cell, add your parameter followed by a single pipe. For example width="300"| will set that cell to a width of 300 pixels. To set more than one parameter, leave a space between each one, as follows: As it appears in a browser: Decimal point alignment A method to get columns of numbers aligned at the decimal point is as follows: As it appears in a browser: If the column of numbers appears in a table with cell padding or cell spacing, you can still align the decimal points without an unsightly gap in the middle. Embed a table in each number's cell and specify its column widths. Make the embedded tables' column widths the same for each cell in the column. (If decimal points are still misaligned using this method, the main table's column may be too narrow. Add a parameter to increase the column's width.) The wiki markup code: |- | |- | |} As it appears in a browser: |- | |- | |} In the case of preformatted text, you can dispense with the table feature entirely and simply start the lines with a space, and put spaces to position the numbers: 432.1 43.21 4.321 However, there should be a good reason to use pre-formatted text in an article. Cladograms There's full documentation at and . If you write this |label3=example_subclade_2 |3= }} }} |label4= mostly sensible clade |4= }} }} |label5=label for example text 5 |6= this is example text 6 - placed where Example text 5 should have gone in the edit tab |label7=first label ignored |label7=second label overwrites first |7= Example item with no subclade but with two labels (that won't work) |label8=example next set of subclades |8= }} }} it looks like this |label3=example_subclade_2 |3= }} }} |label4= mostly sensible clade |4= }} }} |label5=label for example text 5 |6= this is example text 6 - placed where Example text 5 should have gone in the edit tab |label7=first label ignored |label7=second label overwrites first |7= Example item with no subclade but with two labels (that won't work) |label8=example next set of subclades |8= }} }} Classes In the first line of table code, after the " becomes this: simply by replacing inline CSS for the table by class="wikitable". This is because the wikitable class in MediaWiki:Common.css contains a number of table.wikitable CSS style rules. These are all applied at once when you mark a table with the class. You can then add additional style rules if desired. These override the class's rules, allowing you to use the class style as a base and build up on it: Wiki markup As it appears in a browser: Notice that the table retains the gray background of the wikitable class, and the headers are still bold and centered. But now the text formatting has been overridden by the local style statement; all of the text in the table has been made italic and 120% normal size, and the wikitable border has been replaced by the red dashed border. Of course this works only for browsers supporting inline CSS, if it's important use XHTML markup like instead of "font-size:120%", or Wiki markup like text instead of "font-style:italic". Collapsible tables Classes can also be used to collapse tables, so they are hidden by default. Use the style 'collapsible' to enable collapsing behaviour. By default, a collapsible table will begin expanded. To change this, include the additional class 'collapsed' or 'autocollapse' (i.e. only collapse if 3 other collapsible tables are present). You must include a header row, where the 'hide' option will be displayed. Example: Gives: Using class mw-collapsible Another way (worked in mediawiki 1.19rc1)testwiki:User:Krinkle/CollapsingTestpageMw Sorting Tables can be made sortable by adding class="sortable"; for details see ' '. Since this can be very useful, it is wise to keep the possibilities and limitations of this feature in mind when designing a table. For example: * Do not divide a table into sections by subheaders spanning several rows. Instead, an extra column can be made showing the content of these headers on each row, in a short form. * Do not have elements spanning several columns; instead, again, repeat the content on each row, in a short form. * In a column of numbers, do not put text such as "ca." before or after a number - it will break numerical sorting. Do not put any text or alphabetical characters in any cell of a column to be sorted numerically. Try not to put a range of numbers (it does not affect the sorting position for numeric sorting mode, and in the case of a range, the first number determines the position, but if, possibly after sorting this or another column, the element is at the top, it will induce alphabetic sorting mode). Instead, put these texts in a separate column. Alternatively, for the greatest flexibility, alphabetic sorting mode with hidden sortkeys can be used. A long form of abbreviated content can be put as legend outside the table. Wiki markup As it appears in a browser: Numerical and year sorting problems See . Sorting and collapsing It is possible to collapse a sortable table. To do so, you need to use the code As it appears in a browser: If you want the table to default to collapsed state, use the code gives: Conditional table row For a conditional row in a table, we can have: Which gives the following table: (note how the second row is missing) Other table syntax Other types of table syntax that MediaWiki supports: #XHTML #HTML & wiki- syntax (Do not use) All three are supported by MediaWiki and create (currently) valid HTML output, but the pipe syntax is the simplest. Also, HTML & wiki- syntax (i.e., unclosed and tags) will not necessarily remain browser-supported in the future, especially on handheld internet-accessible devices. See also HTML element#Tables. Note however that the thead, tbody, tfoot, colgroup, and col elements are currently not . Comparison of table syntax |- ! scope="row" | Caption | caption | |+ caption |- ! scope="row" | Row | | |- |- ! scope="row" | Data cell | cell1cell2 cell3 | | cell1 || cell2 | cell3 |- ! scope="row" | Header cell | column heading row heading | ! scope="col" | column heading ! scope="row" | row heading |- ! scope="row" rowspan="2" | Sample table | colspan="2" | 1 2 3 4 |- | 1 2 3 4 | |- style="vertical-align: top;" ! scope="row" | Pros | * Can preview or debug with any XHTML editor * Can be indented for easier reading * Well-known * Insensitive to newlines * No characters like "|" which can collide with template and parser function syntax | * Easy to write * Easy to read * Takes little space * Can be learned quickly |- style="vertical-align: top;" ! scope="row" | Cons | * Tedious * Takes a lot of space * Difficult to read quickly * Debugging more difficult due to tag pairing requirements * Indented code might not match nesting. * Condusing newline behaviour as they only occasionally break cells. | * Unfamiliar syntax for experienced HTML editors * Rigid structure * Cannot be indented for clarity * HTML tag text may be easier to read than pipes, plus signs, dashes, etc. * Requires using Template:! to pass a "|" in a parameter. * Sensitive to newlines; see . |- ! scope="col" | ! scope="col" | XHTML ! scope="col" | Wiki-pipe |} See also Template talk:For#Tables. Pipe syntax in terms of the HTML produced The pipe syntax, developed by Magnus Manske, substitutes pipes (|) for HTML. There is an on-line script which converts html tables to pipe syntax tables. The pipes must start at the beginning of a new line, except when separating parameters from content or when using || to separate cells on a single line. The parameters are optional. Tables A table is defined by which generates " ". Rows For each table, an HTML tag will be generated for the first row. To start a new row, use: |- which generates another "". Parameters can be added like this: |- params which generates "". Note: * tags will be automatically opened at the first equivalent * tags will be automatically closed at and equivalents Cells Cells are generated either like this: |cell1 |cell2 |cell3 or like this: |cell1||cell2||cell3 which both generate "cell1cell2cell3". The "||" equals "newline" + "|". Parameters in cells can be used like this: |''params''|cell1||''params''|cell2||''params''|cell3 which will result in cell1 cell2 cell3 Headers Produces a TH, functioning the same way as TD, but with different style. "!" is used instead of the opening "|". "!!" can be used instead of "||". Parameters still use "|", though. Example: !params|cell1 A tag is created by |+ Caption which generates the HTML "Caption". You can also use parameters: |+ params|Caption which will generate "Caption". Summaries A summary is produced by adding a summary attribute after the start of the table. It can be used by screen readers to give visually impaired readers the overall gist of the table, without having to listen to the entire table. For example: produces: Square monitors To format for a square monitor or window, use a tape measure. Determine the height of your rectangular screen. Using that figure measure under the screen to determine the width your monitor’s screen would be if it were square. Mark that location using ink or tape under the screen. Drag the side of your browser’s window to that location so the window is square based on accurate measurements. Square monitors and reading windows are not able to contain tables and galleries made for rectangular and wide screens. When a table or gallery is wider than the monitor, it makes every line of text wider than the screen as well. The px amounts of the following gallery were determined after measuring the window to make sure it was square: Type this: For this: Vertically oriented column headers Sometimes it is desirable (such as in a table predominantly made of numbers) to rotate text such that it proceeds from top to bottom or bottom to top instead of from left to right or right to left. Currently, browser support for this type of styling as a component of HTML or CSS is sporadic (Internet Explorer is one of the few browsers that supports this in cascading stylesheets, albeit in a non-standard way). An alternative solution that works in most if not all browsers is to use images in place of the text. For instance, the following table uses SVG images instead of text to produce the rotated column headings: Normally, one problem with this approach is that readers are directed to different pages when they click on the images. To eliminate this problem—or to direct readers to a different page—you can use the link parameter. A column-header can be coded as follows: ! style="width:3em;" | The image will wikilink to article "xxxx". By setting the link to an empty string (e.g. ), no navigation will occur when visitors click on an image. Note that it might also be a good idea to color the image text blue if you are using the images as links. Also, SVG is the preferred image format in this case because it can be re-scaled to any size without producing artifacts. Wikitable as image gallery :This section is local to Wikipedia (hard-coded here now). A wikitable can be used to display side-by-side images, in the manner of an image gallery (formatted by ""), but with larger images and less vacant area around photos. A simple framed gallery can be formatted using class="wikitable" to generate the minimal thin-lines around images/photos within the table: Note the result below (with thin-lined cells): Another issue about the standard "" tag, in 2007-2008, was that it put 4 images per line, overrunning the right margin of a wiki article displayed in portrait-style width (like 800x600), unless the gallery had only 3 images. However, a wikitable uses typical image-links with sizes, such as "" so 4 images could be displayed on a wikitable line within a 600px width (for 800x600 resolution screens). Another advantage about wikitable images, compared to "" formatting, is the ability to "square" each image when similar heights are needed, so consider putting 2-number image sizes (such as "199x95px"), where the 2nd number limits height: Note the 3 images sized "199x95px" appear identical height, of 95px (4th image purposely smaller). The "95px" forces height, while "199x" fits the various widths (could even be "999x"): Therefore, the use of size "199x95px" (or "999x95px") produces the auto-height-sizing beyond the "" tag, and with the option to set taller thumbnails ("199x105px"), or even to have some images purposely smaller than other images of "95px" height. A very short height ("70px") allows many more images across the table: The above wikitable-coding produces the result below, of 6 columns: Once images have been placed in a wikitable, control of formatting can be adjusted when more images are added. Shifting/centering Images within a wikitable can be shifted by inserting non-breaking spaces (" ") before or after the image-link (" Image:"). However, auto-centering simply requires use of center-tags to be placed around an image-link for centering in a cell (" "). In the example below, note how Col2 uses , but Col3 uses " ": The above coding generates the table below: note the middle garden image is centered (but not the left image), and the right image has 2 spaces before " View...": Also note that the tag "" made a smaller text-size caption. However, fonts also can be sized by percent (style="font-size: 87%;"), where the actual percent-size as displayed depends on the various sizes allowed for a particular font. | style="font-size: 87%;" | View from bell tower The column attribute, above, uses "style=" to set the font-size for the caption, following the 2nd vertical-bar "|". A font-size: 65% is very small, while style="font-size: 87%;" is a mid-size font, larger than the tag small. Speed/transfer rates Actual transfer/display speeds depend on individual files. In 2007 to March 2009 some serious flaws existed in the thumbnailing process when combined with the gallery-display, making thumbnails sometimes larger than the originals. For this reason some users explicitly used tables instead of the gallery tag. However, these issues are fixed as of March 2009. Generate a chart with a table Using or another template that uses . Converting spreadsheet to wikitable format To convert from spreadsheets such as Gnumeric, MS Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc, you can use the Copy & Paste Excel-to-Wiki converter or you can save your spreadsheets as .csv and use the csv2wikitable converter. Tables and WYSIWYG Due to the complexity of wikimarkup (especially tables), a common question is if there is any visual editor to make creating and modifying tables easier. Unfortunately at the moment no such editor exists, however it is possible to create a table with a HTML editor (like Adobe Dreamweaver) and then copy the html code generated by this into the page. It is possible in the future that a WYSIWYG editor will be adopted (there has been much discussion about this in the past, however there are many technical hurdles that need to be solved). For the more technically inclined/adventurous tools such as WYSIFTW exist, however they do not incorporate the complete WYSIWYG experience and currently do not support tables (although they may do so in the future).